Lessons in IT: When IT pros go bad

#1: Tell someone else who knows what they’re doing before you fire someone who can damage the company.

A former job, right before I was hired the previous IT manager did a little sabotage after leaving (They think he was looking for contract work, but still illegal and immoral). They found the problem, fixed it, and changed all the passwords. He also deleted all his files from everywhere. Fortunately the new IT manager knew he was going to do that and backed up everything a couple of weeks before he quit.

When our Network Admin left, he changed all of the password on the firewalls and switches, which we had to reset and reconfigure. He was an utter d-bag who got mad because he was being replaced. The reason he was being replaced – Changing the owners account password as a prank, it sure went over well.

#3: Compensate your employees and quit with the sexism already.

You know I did work with someone who did a similar thing. She programmed Cobol and was good, I mean really good. I learned a lot working next to her for about a year. The management was all male and white, this was the year 1993. They treated women badly and she was no exception. Overworked, under paid, no respect. You get the pic.

So she toils away and works her butt off putting up with BS the whole time. Finally a good job came through at another programming shop and she took it. Gave them a full month’s notice. Worked diligently until the last day. Told them to call her if they had any trouble, she documented pretty good, we had walk-thrus in those days. No documentation meant your code did not get out of the test environment. So, any decent programmer could figure it out given time.

She said call me if anything goes wrong or you want some advice after I’m gone. The dumb-ass manager would definitely need it because he did not understand her worth to the company. She gave them a # to dial to get her but it went to a Dial-A-Prayer hotline.